Robert B. Finley

Robert B. Finley, Jr. was a mid-20th-century natural history researcher whose published work focused on mammals of the western United States. A Project Gutenberg edition of his 1953 paper A New Subspecies of Wood Rat (Neotoma mexicana) from Colorado identifies him as the author and preserves his work from the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.

That paper shows the kind of research he did best: close field observation, specimen study, and careful description of regional variation in species. Another listed work, The Wood Rats of Colorado: Distribution and Ecology from 1958, suggests a sustained interest in the ecology and distribution of small mammals in Colorado.

Reliable biographical details about his personal life were not easy to confirm from the sources available here, so this overview stays focused on his published scientific work. What comes through clearly is a writer and researcher devoted to precise, place-based zoology.